Cole’s Takes Sampling From In-Store to Game Day

Cole’s Quality Foods is taking its traditional in-store sampling program out of retail and on the road to introduce four new product flavors to a more concentrated male market. The frozen bread brand’s Tasty Tailgate Tour is hitting 21 high-profile NCAA and NASCAR venues over the next five months. The tour kicked off at the Michigan State University vs. Western Michigan University football game in East Lansing on Aug. 30 and ends Jan. 25 at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, AL.

“We’ve always positioned the Cole’s brand toward families and particularly toward mom, because let’s face it, mom tends to do most of the shopping. But we thought these new flavors might skew more toward the tailgating or male market,” Ian Barrie, creative director at Cole’s, told Buzz. “The guy of the house may know he’s getting garlic bread with his spaghetti dinner on Thursday night, but he may not know what the brand is. Now he can say he tried a new flavor or his son tried it, and ask for it by name.”

The tour is traveling in a 42-foot Airstream Skydeck Bus and trailer with a smaller mobile grilling cart to deploy into raceway campsites. At each stop, 12 brand ambassadors are manning the experience, cooking up the brand’s new Chipotle BBQ Texas Toast, Spicy Buffalo Texas Toast, Hidden Valley® Ranch Texas Toast and Hidden Valley Ranch® Cheese Sticks on two six-foot grills and engaging consumers in a survey from an iPad mini. QR codes on the bus and on staff jerseys lead consumers to the tour microsite where they can enter to win $2,500 in tailgating gear by sharing photos and videos on Instagram with hashtag #tastytailgate, or through email.

As for the bus, the interior has branded couches, big screen TVs, a private bar and a spectator rooftop deck. Depending on the event, the bus is reserved for VIPs and the media. Agency: i2i Mobile Marketing, Wheeling, WV.

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